Has science taken a wrong turn? If so, what corrections are needed? Chronicles of scientific misbehavior. The role of heretic-pioneers and forbidden questions in the sciences. Is peer review working? The perverse "consensus of leading scientists." Good public relations versus good science.

Since I entered physics, I’ve seen grand unified models proposed and falsified. I’ve seen loads of dark matter candidates not being found, followed by a ritual parameter adjustment to explain the lack of detection. I’ve seen supersymmetric particles being “predicted” with constantly increasing masses, from some GeV to some 100 GeV to LHC energies of some TeV. And now that the LHC hasn’t seen any superpartners either, particle physicists are more than willing to once again move the goalposts.

During my professional career, all I have seen is failure. A failure of particle physicists to uncover a more powerful mathematical framework to improve upon the theories we already have. Yes, failure is part of science – it’s frustrating, but not worrisome. What worries me much more is our failure to learn from failure. Rather than trying something new, we’ve been trying the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.

When I look at the data what I see is that our reliance on gauge-symmetry and the attempt at unification, the use of naturalness as guidance, and the trust in beauty and simplicity aren’t working. The cosmological constant isn’t natural. The Higgs mass isn’t natural. The standard model isn’t pretty, and the concordance model isn’t simple. Grand unification failed. It failed again. And yet we haven’t drawn any consequences from this: Particle physicists are still playing today by the same rules as in 1973.

Since I entered physics, I’ve seen grand unified models proposed and falsified. I’ve seen loads of dark matter candidates not being found, followed by a ritual parameter adjustment to explain the lack of detection. I’ve seen supersymmetric particles being “predicted” with constantly increasing masses, from some GeV to some 100 GeV to LHC energies of some TeV. And now that the LHC hasn’t seen any superpartners either, particle physicists are more than willing to once again move the goalposts.

During my professional career, all I have seen is failure. A failure of particle physicists to uncover a more powerful mathematical framework to improve upon the theories we already have. Yes, failure is part of science – it’s frustrating, but not worrisome. What worries me much more is our failure to learn from failure. Rather than trying something new, we’ve been trying the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.

When I look at the data what I see is that our reliance on gauge-symmetry and the attempt at unification, the use of naturalness as guidance, and the trust in beauty and simplicity aren’t working. The cosmological constant isn’t natural. The Higgs mass isn’t natural. The standard model isn’t pretty, and the concordance model isn’t simple. Grand unification failed. It failed again. And yet we haven’t drawn any consequences from this: Particle physicists are still playing today by the same rules as in 1973.

Last year was a truly remarkable one for CERN, and I am looking forward to another great year in 2017...

Turning now to 2017, our objectives are exciting and ambitious in all the domains of the Organization’s engagement. Here I will limit myself to a few examples. It will be an important year for the LHC high-luminosity upgrade, with construction and testing of the first full-length prototypes of both the 11-Tesla dipole and the inner-triplet quadrupole. Tenders for civil engineering at points one and five will be issued this year for adjudication in 2018 and execution during LS2. The year will also see the production of several Technical Design Reports for the Phase-2 upgrades of ATLAS and CMS. The non-LHC programme is also marked by several important milestones: the commissioning and operation of the third HIE-Isolde cryomodule, the connection of the GBAR experiment to ELENA’s new antiproton deceleration ring, the completion of the ICARUS modules at the CERN Neutrino Platform and their shipment to Fermilab (where they will take part in the short-baseline programme as of 2018), the commissioning of the AWAKE electron beam line, and many more. Preparations for CERN’s future (including CLIC, the FCC study, the Physics Beyond Colliders working group and accelerator R&D work) will progress at full speed to meet the deadline of the end of 2018 to submit reports as input for the update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics.

One thing has always puzzled me about the particle collision fans - and I can best explain this with an analogy.If you take a glass sculpture and smash it into tiny fragments, you are not proving that these fragments actually make up the sculpture simply because there is no known mechanism to somehow reassemble them.Similarly we have the same problem with life & sentience - you can take a human body & reduce it to it's elementary particles and you will not find a single sign of life or an elementary "life particle" - all you would have is a broken body.

So why do these people assume that these elementary particles are real (they have an almost negligible existence span) and not just broken fragments?

You will never get a man to understand something his salary depends on him not understanding.

neil, 'lifeforms' came from/assembled from 'non-lifeforms', there is nowhere else life can come from, so smashing 'lifeforms' into 'non-life' bits is not just a broken body, it can be reassembled into a potential new life-form, doesn't matter that it's very rare circumstances that this happens or has never been seen before or mankind doesn't know how yet, we know the universe works on the principle that simple things build up in complexity, not complex things like a divine creator creates simple things and complex things as they dream up in magic spirit chakra land

lw1990 wrote:neil, 'lifeforms' came from/assembled from 'non-lifeforms', there is nowhere else life can come from, so smashing 'lifeforms' into 'non-life' bits is not just a broken body, it can be reassembled into a potential new life-form, doesn't matter that it's very rare circumstances that this happens or has never been seen before or mankind doesn't know how yet, we know the universe works on the principle that simple things build up in complexity, not complex things like a divine creator creates simple things and complex things as they dream up in magic spirit chakra land

the mainstream model has dozens of primordial particles which also defies your simple to complex rule..which I agree with, but I wouldn't necessarily be arrogant either and think that YOU are the most complex thing that exists.

The universe is very old and lets face it, most people aren't advanced enough to even treat each other with respect and dignity. Certainly no room there for arrogance.